Developing Assassin’s Creed IV For Current-Gen Was “Nightmarish”

I recently reviewed Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag on PS3, despite some tiny glitches and bugs it was a very solid game from a technical standpoint. Then again, when you’re having that much fun, the technical niggles are less noticeable. I’m not going to be so shameless as to plug my review here so I won’t because I have values and stuff. I’m also hungry, linking things takes effort.

Black Flag is one of a number of games that is cross-generational in that it was developed for next-gen and current-gen consoles but according to the game’s director, Ashraf Ismail, getting it to run smoothly and look great on both generations was a task of “nightmarish” proportions.

Speaking with fans in this Reddit thread, Ismail said of the next-gen builds, “Development on both [PS4 and Xbox One] was very smooth since they are both very similar to PCs. Last generation was very difficult and even nightmarish. Both Xbox One and PS4 were easy to deal with and the 1st parties were both there to help us out. The one gray area was understanding both Sony and MS requirements for the consoles. They were trying to figure them out themselves.”

On PS4′s bespoke DualShock 4 features, he added, “The touchpad is used for scrolling through the map, adding waypoints, zooming etc,” and concluded, “Overall it was super smooth to develop on [next-gen].”

You know what? Kudos to Ubisoft Montreal for pulling it off though because the game looks so damn pretty on my PS3, the next-gen version must be amazing.